Be Excellent To Each Other

Put it towards a 3D printer, it's the gift (to yourself) that keeps on giving (to you).

Yeah, that's my plan.

I want one of these:



If there's a 300cc engine anywhere that sounds better than that I'd love to hear it. Four cylinder inline. Only five grand that engine too!

That would definitely wake them up in the houses at the edge of the field where we normally fly.

Ordered.

And a few tubes of gorilla glue.

Mini Sky hunter fixed and rudderless.

If it crashes again tomorrow I'll be fucking flummoxed.

Woo yeah, Mini Sky Hunter success!

Crash landed my Vampire though

Sounded good in the air with the new fan though.

The Grimlet has decreed he wants a drone for his birthday.

What should I buy that's
a) indestructible (or at least easy to repair)
b) can basically fly itself
c) can fit a camera (I have a Go pro)
d) not going to cost me all the money

The GoPro requirement elevates it out of the toy category. A used phantom might fit the bill, gazchap was selling one a while ago.

Oh. Fuck that noise, then.

Let's pretend I never said that.

How much money do you want to spend then?

£100, maybe? £150 at a stretch?

I've still got my original Phantom which will fit a GoPro 3 (I think it's the 3) which I'll sell for £100+p&p? Should be fine with a fresh battery (and you'll need to get a lipo balance charger as I don't have the one that came with it any more I don't think) and it has uprated motors.

My child is a clumsy Mofo. Is he going to crash it within seconds?

Probably.

It still worked after it crashed at ~20mph into a rock face though, so should be good

How old is he Grim...?

Definitely wouldn't let a kid loose with something like a DJI Phantom unless they're old enough that you're happy for them to use power tools and things like that.

If you're going to be with him though then you could have loads of fun with it, you'll not get anything even close to that good for that sort of money. Just make sure you RTFM first, like gazchap didn't.

He'll be 9.

I think something a little more child-friendly (and onlooker-friendly) might be wise.

Thanks anyway though, Gaz!

Ah yeah, thought he was a bit older than that. Not really a 9 year old's thing.

To be honest there's any number out there now at this sort of price but they're not something I've got any personal experience of.

This one looks ok, though:

http://www.banggood.com/Cheerson-CX-35- ... s=category

It has a camera on board and even FPV built in, it also has altitude hold so although it lacks the full GPS return to home sort of functions it should be easy to fly.

Quadcopters are really simple devices mechanically and basic control boards are fairly well established and generic so they pretty much all fly ok these days.

Excellent, thanks! I shall confer with Head Office.

The brighter the body choice the easier it'll be to find in trees.

Unlike some girls I dated.

3D Printed Plane success!



Not only does it fly but it actually does it really well.

Hey, it looks good. How long did it take, all told?

Actual hours of my time? I've got no idea. But I could probably do it again in about 15-20 hours, knowing what I know now and if I really put my mind to it.

Awesome

So glad how it's turned out for you mate, look forward to seeing it soar in real life.

Great fun flying these little wings yesterday.

Already ordered a new camera to replace this broken one:

https://youtu.be/qbi0O42sX8I?t=6m30s

Yeah, brilliant these wings. Such a shame my camera spat out the SD card after crashing in that field, I'll tape it over next time. Or PRINT A NEW CASE!

Fantastic morning flying with Mark and his brother. My Vampire EDF was enjoying itself so much that it clapped its wings together over its head coming out of a dive. Then made itself into a jigsaw.

I had a look a the footage last night and I had just managed to swing my mini quad round to catch the last little piece of it fluttering down like sad confetti. Harrowing.

Managed to snap this nice shot of our kid's little Spitfire, though:

Great picture, Mark

Cheers!


I spent most of the weekend turning the dumping ground of a garage into a compact combined workshop/plane room/gym/bar. Spent almost nothing on this so far. After the many tip runs were done I threw a load of old emulsion onto the walls. Then for the workbench I've used a fire door and a piece of kitchen worktop that we had lying around. I did buy a light fitting and some LED bulbs from Screwfix, though. And also some long shelf brackets that are going to make plane holders on the walls. And some shorter ones that I'm going to use to make shelves out of all the old skateboard decks that I've been hoarding for no reason whatsoever. I also need to pick up one of those draughtsman's chairs in case I want to sit down and work on stuff and then a dartboard that I can hang on the back of the garage door.

That looks awesome! My garage is going to be something similar once I get a shed to store the gardening tools but yeah, awesome!

That looks good Mark. It's actually quite inspiring as I need to do something with my garage. As soon as the missus does something about the LITERAL heap of baby toys and car seats that are taking up a large portion of the current space of course

Yep, that's what I had to deal with, it was amazing though to see how much crap we'd accumulated when it was all laid out on the driveway. Still got a small mound that needs to go to a charity shop and then tackle the loft.

Exactly this, oddly.

Spitfire pic reminds me of 'faked UFO' pics from Usbourne books. Brilliant capture that with the light.

Such a shame you didn't catch the Vampire folding up. Had a look last night for a suitable airframe to put the guts into. There's another Vampire of course (although can't find the airframe on it's own) and also this!

https://www.aliexpress.com/store/produc ... 17785.html

Honestly that looks like it'll fly like crap. Also not sure that many people would be too stoked to see something that looks like a military drone pottering round.

I'll put smiley face stickers on it.



It's supposed to be a horrible build too. I'll keep looking for another Vampire I think, but keep your eyes out for a suitable host frame too plz.

There's a cheap hawk kit on Hobbyking too, but not read up on how they fly yet. I'll do that now that I'm in work.

Hmm, sounds good from what I've just read. UK stock too.

https://hobbyking.com/en_us/bae-hawk-re ... e-epo.html

In the meantime I'm going to get the Skyraider going again. I think I borrowed some Y leads from it to get my Mini Skyhunter built.

Can you get one of these? Potential for upsetting even more people but you could build a real working pulse jet!

I'd love to mess with a pulse jet but it's hard to put into words how loud even a small one is.

In other news I beat my personal FPV speed record when we were out yesterday morning (bit of a cheaty dive though to scrape it past 100mph):



Motor seemed to be well within limits, though. So next time out I'll try a prop with more pitch and see if it can go faster still before anything melts.

Cor. Was that with your printed one?

No, I doubt that'll even go half that speed. It was one of these:

http://flyingwings.co.uk/fpv-uav/fpv-wi ... -wing.html

Cor, that looks like a nimble little thing. Is it hard to fly?

If you can fly already then it's very straightforward but it's definitely not something that would work for learning. It just goes exactly where you point it and it's really responsive. Planes that are good for learning tend to fly a fair bit slower and have a tendency to naturally just fly themselves and self-correct.